


The One Who Came Back

by iSaphura



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Swearing, green jacket, red jacket
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 12:21:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18965149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iSaphura/pseuds/iSaphura
Summary: He had been betrayed before, but it still hurt every time. He should have learned his lesson years ago: partnerships don’t last in this line of work. At least, not usually.





	The One Who Came Back

**Author's Note:**

> Won't lie, this thing could probably use some work and is a bit disjointed, but I finished it so it gets posted. Starts out in Green Jacket, ends up in Red Jacket, with references to episode 112 of Red Jacket (you know the one) and "First Contact" (because why not).  
> Side note, I swear I didn't intend for my stories to have a naming trend, it just happened.  
> Please remember to kudo and review.

Lupin curled up into a ball even more, not that it helped. The blows continued to rain down, mostly fists and feet and blunt weapons but a few minutes ago someone showed up with a goddamned whip and was having a field day with it. The thugs were having their way with him, and there wasn’t much he could do to stop them. Not anymore. He just bit down on his lip and took the beating. He wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of hearing him yelp or scream. It was all he could do at this point. His only act of defiance.

“Enough!”

The rain of blows stopped, and Lupin relaxed his aching body to try and take stock of his injuries. They were numerous: at least three bullet wounds, several cracked or broken bones, the most notable being three fingers and a cracked rib or two, an unknown number of blooming bruises and the lacerations from the idiot with the whip. His green jacket had turned a sickly brown from all the blood, and his tie was practically orange.

“Any last words?”

Oh, he had plenty of last words. None of them complimentary. But he didn’t feel like wasting them on the man standing above him holding his beloved P-38. No, he would save them for the day when he would inevitably see the man who betrayed him in hell.

He knew that, somewhere, his grandfather was spinning in his grave. His predecessor was probably laughing his ass off in hell. This was how the Lupin family ended: beaten to a pulp after a botched job and a betrayal. This was why the two previous Arséne Lupins had run solo. He wasn’t worthy of the name.

Really he knew he should fight back, but what was the point? He was tied up, beaten up, broken up, his time was up. Damn.

That’s when the gunfire started. People outside of his field of vision yelled out. The man holding his P-38 spun around in surprise. Before he could fire, he crumpled to the ground, his eyes unseeing and glassy, looking past Lupin and into eternity.

The last thing he remembered was someone yelling his name.

 

Jigen had gotten two miles away before he turned around. A week later he still wasn’t sure why. He had the car. He had the goods. He had the distance on any pursuers that he could easily have lost them and made a clean getaway. The cops hadn’t even shown up yet. The one thing he didn’t have was the kid he went into the job with.

Betrayals in their line of work weren’t uncommon, but leaving the kid behind hadn’t sat well with Jigen, and so he had turned the car around at speed while screaming profanities at Lupin, any deity who happened to be listening, himself, and the guys he had just robbed.

When he finally got back to the compound, it wasn’t hard to sneak back in. Most of the attention was on securing the blown out walls, not keeping an eye on the ones still standing. But attention was also high on the fact that one of the people who had dared to rob the place had been caught, and everyone wanted a piece of him.

There was even a fucking line.

A quick survey of the building revealed a small window, and from the sounds coming from the other side, Jigen figured that that was where he’d find what he was looking for.

Ten minutes and several dozen bullets later, Jigen was pulling away with the kid lying in the back seat. It was a miracle Lupin was still alive, and from what Jigen had found he would have been dead a minute later. As it was, Jigen hadn’t been sure if the thief would survive his extensive injuries. He had some medical experience, nothing formal just hands-on knowledge on how to remove bullets and stitch wounds and usually involved a knife, an open flame, and a bottle of hard spirits, but Lupin’s injuries were rather extensive.

Taking the kid to a hospital was out, considering they were already wanted criminals and they had about a mil-and-a-half worth of stolen goods in the trunk. Jigen wasn’t as familiar with the area or its inhabitants as Lupin, but there must be a doctor who was willing to treat patients and look the other way while they slipped out the back.

Turns out there was, but Jigen ended up paying the guy with their loot and then some. It was touch and go for a while, and Lupin may or may not have flat-lined at one point, but the kid pulled through and recovered enough strength that Jigen could take him somewhere safe to recover the rest of the way.

That had been five days ago, and Lupin had barely moved or woken up for more than a few minutes at a time. Jigen had taken the long way around to one of their safe houses, a nice little apartment in a small city or large town depending on how you looked at it. He set Lupin up in the kid’s usual room and did his best to make him comfortable and keep an eye on his wounds. He changed the bandages daily and kept an eye out for any signs of infection. None showed up, and it looked like the kid would heal up with minimal scarring.

When Jigen wasn’t keeping an eye on Lupin, he tried to keep busy, or at least keep himself occupied. There was a small “library”, more like a shelf, and Jigen read through the contents in three days. After a day and a half, he gave up and went to the little book store two streets over and bought a few more. He mostly based his purchases on the cover art but also bought a cookbook. He went for walks, but only in the early morning or late evening when it was less likely that he’d run into somebody. Listening or watching the news made him anxious, but it soon became clear that he had shaken off the cops and the marks, so that was good. It didn’t take long for Jigen to fall into a routine of taking care of the kid and taking care of himself.

The kid. Lupin was, for all intents and purposes, a kid, being barely twenty-going-on-ten. Of course, Jigen was barely more than a kid himself, being a few years short of thirty, but he felt much older. Despite his young age, Lupin had made quite the name for himself in the past few years, building up an impressive reputation and resume in no time flat. He had the flash and energy of a firework, and knowledge spanning countless subjects: everything from animal husbandry to classical mythology, chemistry to Chinese literature, even some rudimentary astrophysics. The kid wasn’t the easiest person to work with, but he sure was entertaining.

The kid. Jigen smiled. _I guess I’m going to have to stop calling him that._

 

When Lupin woke up, the first thing that registered was pain. Lots and lots of pain. It made his eyes water and took his breath away. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t hurt in some way, shape, or form.

The second thing that registered was that he was very much alive and in a very comfortable bed.

The rest of his senses came back slowly: the feeling of bandages and a blanket of a comforting weight. The sight of sunlight coming into a room with light blue walls. The sounds of cars passing by outside. And finally, the smell of something positively _delicious_.

He just lay there for a while, watching the shadows on the wall change as the sun crept along in the sky. He smiled at the vase of flowers on the side table and marveled at the light illuminating the petals so that they were glowing iridescent jewels. He turned his eyes to the door as footsteps approached. The door opened, and the last person he expected peered in.

It was Jigen.

“Oh hey, you’re awake,” Jigen said.

Lupin nodded. It was all he could do, and it nearly took all of his strength to do it.

“I’ll be right back.”

Jigen ducked back out. Lupin’s brain tried to process the information it had just been given. The last thing it remembered regarding Jigen was the anger and frustration of watching him drive off with the loot, leaving Lupin to face his fate at the hands of the gang they had just robbed. He remembered watching as the car disappeared and maybe screaming in rage at being betrayed again.

He had been betrayed before, but it still hurt every time. He should have learned his lesson years ago: partnerships don’t last in this line of work. At least, not usually.

But it seemed Jigen had come back. For no apparent reason, Jigen had gone back for him.

Lupin glanced at the door again as Jigen came in with a tray. His mouth began to water at the smell of the soup that was steaming in the bowl.

He dipped in the spoon and held it out. Lupin eyed it warily. Jigen rolled his eyes. “For fuck's sake, kid, it’s _chicken noodle_.”

Lupin squinted. How much could he trust Jigen, now that the man had tried to run out on him?

Jigen huffed, blew on the soup, and took a sip. “See? It’s fine. Actually, it could use some salt.”

Lupin watched in amusement as Jigen left the room, and then returned with a paper bag. He reached in and sprinkled something into the soup.

“It’s cheese,” Jigen said. He tried another spoonful. “That’s better.”

He pulled out a new spoon, which he loaded with the newly improved soup and held it out to Lupin. “Here, take it easy, you’re still pretty weak.”

Part of Lupin resented the fact that Jigen had to hand feed him, but the rest of his inner self quickly squashed the resented part. The soup was as good as it smelled, and made him feel warm inside. He even managed to down a few noodles before nearly inhaling one. Jigen gently thumped the one part of his back that wasn’t stitched or bruised and waited for him to catch his breath once he stopped coughing and the pain in his sides resided enough that he could eat again. Overall, it was a simple meal, and the effort of ingesting it wiped him out, but it was good.

“Get some rest,” Jigen said. “I’ll fill you in later.”

“Y’came b’ck,” Lupin mumbled.

“What?”

“Y’came b’ck,” Lupin repeated. “Why’d y’come b’ck… f’me?”

Jigen paused for a moment and sighed. “Like I said, I’ll fill you in later.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

“Y’know, you never did tell me why you came back.”

“Hm?”

Lupin and Jigen were out on the small terrace of the safe house they were staying at. It had been a stressful few days: first Goemon went missing, then they found him inches from death at the hands of an assassin duo. With Pops in the area, they had to flee to a small safe house a few hours away. It was a tense drive. Lupin had contacted a back-alley doctor who stitched Goemon up and reset some of his bones, but now it was up to Goemon to rest and recover. It would take time, months probably if not longer, for Goemon to fully recover physically, neither Jigen nor Lupin knew how long it would take for any mental injuries to heal over. Most of the drive was in silence after Goemon nearly dove out of the car when the opening guitar riff of Hotel California came on the radio.

Jigen had known that something about the entire ordeal was bothering Lupin more than usual. For one, he was blaming himself and being harder on himself than normal. There wasn’t much more either of them could have done: they had located Goemon within days of him going missing. They had found him alive and mostly in one piece. It could have ended far worse than it did.

Unfortunately, it was a few days too long for Lupin, and in the day and a half since they had rescued Goemon, the thief had become strangely withdrawn. He rarely left Goemon’s side, and would just stare at the sleeping samurai. He had been doing just that when Jigen jammed a glass of his best whiskey into his hand and dragged him out onto the terrace for some fresh air, and to give Goemon some space.

“Back when we robbed McCloud,” Lupin said. He swirled his drink and the ice clinked against the glass. “You could have left me. I thought you had. You had the loot. But you came back.”

“Lupin that was ages ago,” Jigen said.

“I know, but you came back. Why’d you come back?”

_Why’d y’come b’ck…. f’me?_

Jigen took a deep drag of his cigarette and breathed the smoke out slowly. He hadn’t thought about that job in years. It was one of the first he had pulled with Lupin and the first that had gone to shit. It was his first lesson that if Lupin’s plans went wrong, they did so spectacularly. He could still vividly picture Lupin lying there in bed, bandaged from head to toe and beaten to within an inch of his life. It was a miracle either of them made it out of it alive, all things considered.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I considered it,” he said. He glanced over at Lupin. “You didn’t think I would, did you?”

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I considered it,” Lupin echoed. “I had been stabbed in the back by a partner before, but that was the first time I...”

The sentence went unfinished. Jigen remembered how long it took for the young thief to fully recover. How long it took for either of them to recover. Their partnership should have ended there and then, but it didn’t. In fact, the job they had pulled once Lupin was back up to speed went perfectly smoothly, the two working like a well-oiled machine, as if nothing had ever happened. Jigen had expected Lupin to bring up the McCloud job and ask exactly what he was asking now much sooner but never did. Jigen later figured out it was one of Lupin’s quirks: he never dwelt on the past. What was done, was done. He only focused on the present and what was to come. Though whether it was because the thief was running to the future or running from the past, Jigen was never sure.

Which only worried Jigen more that the thief was dredging up past events like this.

“When I found Goemon, that job was the first thing that came to mind,” Lupin said. He reached over with his right hand and rubbed a spot on his left shoulder, where under his shirt was a faint line left by the idiot with the whip. “I remember lying in that room on the floor getting the shit beaten out of me, and the entire time I was saving every bit of anger I felt so that if I ever saw you in the afterlife, I’d let you have it. I didn’t expect to live through that. I didn’t expect you to come back. That was a couple of hours and I wanted it to end, Goemon was in there for a couple of _days_ , and he was defiant to the end.”

Even when Jigen had first joined forces with Lupin, it wasn’t like the thief to just give up. He always had contingency plans, back-ups to the back-ups, one more ace up his sleeve.

“Goemon isn’t the kind of person to resent or hold grudges,” Jigen said. “Besides, he had total confidence that you’d come to get him.”

“And what if I had been too late?”

“Then I would have gotten him. Damn it, Lupin, we did everything we could. We were damned lucky to find Goemon as quickly as we did, and that he lasted as long as he did. I honestly don’t think there could have been a better outcome.” He held up a hand as Lupin opened his mouth. “No more woulda, coulda, shoulda. It’s done. We have to move on and deal with the consequences. Just like with McCloud.”

The two lapsed into silence. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.

Jigen broke it a few minutes later. “In the days after that job, I asked myself why I went back for you. Like I said, I would be lying if I didn’t consider leaving you. I could never come up with a real answer, other than when I was driving away from McCloud’s compound, something in my gut told me that if I didn’t turn that fucking car around and go back for the kid I left behind, then I would spend the rest of my days regretting it.” He looked over at Lupin. “I don’t know if it was a hunch or a premonition, but I knew I had to go back.”

Lupin nodded. The silence returned. Lupin was the one to break it. “Kid, huh?”

Jigen humphed. “You were barely out of diapers when we started!”

“C’mon, Jigen, give me some credit. Besides, you’re not _that_ much older than me.”

“I stopped calling you kid after that night.” Jigen smiled into his drink. “You earned that much.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Lupin took a swig from his drink. “Do you ever regret turning around?”

“Sometimes,” Jigen admitted. “But honestly? It was the best decision of my damn life, next to accepting your job offer. Almost didn’t take that: some hot-shot kid comes in and wants _me_ to help him rob the god-damn Fed. Who in their right mind would ever take that job?”

“A hot-shot gunman who wasn’t in his right mind, that’s who,” Lupin said.

“Thanks, I guess.”

There was a muffled, heavy thud somewhere inside. Lupin snuffed out his cigarette and Jigen sighed before downing the last of his whiskey.

“He tried to get out of bed again.”

“I swear if he pops any more of his stitches…”

“We’re going to have to tie him down.”

“Like that’ll hold him.”

“Maybe we can borrow some handcuffs from Pops. He has enough to spare.”

“Hey, if you want to go a rial up the inspector, be my guest, but I'm not dealing with an angry ICPO inspector and a samurai who won't stay in bed at the same time.”


End file.
